Home & Interdependence (Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5786)

Home & Interdependence (Acharei Mot-Kedoshim 5786)

Apr 24, 2026 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

If you haven’t yet listened to the recent two-part debate between Rabbis Sharon Brous and David Ingber on the podcast “Being Jewish with Jonah Platt,” I want to suggest that you do. In addition to being a model of civil disagreement, their dialogue also expresses a debate taking place within much of the American Jewish community, particularly about our individual and collective relationships with Israel, our sense of and response to anti-Jewish rhetoric and actions, and our political affiliations and alliances.

One of the terms mentioned on the podcast is one I hear frequently these days: a sense of political homelessness. While I will leave the political part to my esteemed colleagues, I want to focus on the second half of that phrase: homelessness—or its inverse, at-homeness. Because the question of where and when we feel at home—or whether we do at all—matters profoundly. One could argue that it’s a throughline, perhaps the throughline, of Jewish life.

Home is not only a place, of course. It’s a place that enables a condition: a sense of safety, ease, agency. To quote Billy Joel in what I would argue is one of his most Jewish lyrics, home is when we feel that “I’ll never be a stranger, and I’ll never be alone.”

If that condition were easy to access and maintain, my guess is that Billy Joel, like so many other songwriters, wouldn’t have been inspired to write about it, and their songs wouldn’t have resonated with so many listeners. At-homeness seems to have a perpetually elusive quality. For so many of us, sensing it, being inside it, requires continual practice.

As my friend Rabbi Zvika Kriger observed in a conversation on this topic this week, being not-at-home seems like an underlying theme of the Torah. From the very first humans, who are expelled from their home in the Garden of Eden moments after their creation, to the Israelites, who, as the Torah ends, have not yet crossed the Jordan River into their promised homeland, the Torah repeatedly invites us to question what it means to be at home—to recognize, in God’s words, that “you are strangers and sojourners with Me.”

We, of course, live in an unusual moment in history. For most of our lifetimes, Jews have had a political and cultural home in the state of Israel. And, at the same time, many or most of us in North America have also experienced a sense of political, and often cultural, at-homeness too. Whether and how one can be at home in multiple places, multiple languages, multiple cultures—that is both a question of much of the contemporary, globalized world, and a primary question for the Jewish people collectively and many of us individually.

Parashat Kedoshim, the second half of the double Torah portion we read this week, includes one of the most famous lines of the Torah: “Do not seek vengeance or bear a grudge against anyone of your people; you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). Rabbi Akiva taught that the second half of this verse is klal gadol baTorah, the great principle of our tradition. Yet one of the most pressing questions of recent decades, and certainly of our moment, is, Who do we understand to be our neighbors? Who do we understand to be our people?

Underlying that question, I believe, is the question of home: Do we share and experience a collective sense of home with our people, with our neighbors? I think we certainly aspire to do so. Must we? What happens if we don’t? Do we still feel at home?

When asked by a prospective convert to summarize the entire Torah while the convert stood on one foot, Hillel the Elder famously inverted Rabbi Akiva’s dictum: “That which is hateful to you do not do unto others—this is the entire Torah, the rest is commentary. Go and study.” Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Rotenberg Alter (1799-1866), the founder of the Ger Hasidic dynasty, asks, “Why didn’t Hillel simply quote the verse in Leviticus?” He answers:

“Hillel recognized that the convert wanted to learn the principles of Judaism in an easy and accessible way. He understood that the convert’s perception was limited/fragile at that moment, and that he could only grasp the negative side—namely, not doing evil to others (refraining from what would cause himself pain).”

“However,” continues the rebbe, “to achieve the positive side of love—the level of ‘And you shall love your neighbor as yourself’—would have been beyond his capacity to understand at that time. Therefore, in his desire to bring him closer and bring him under the wings of the Divine Presence (Shekhinah), Hillel used a form of speech that the convert could understand” [in that moment].

I find I’m frequently drawn back to the story of Hillel and the convert (actually there are a few stories in the same place in the Talmud). Perhaps that’s because it’s so deeply about this threshold of at-homeness. The convert—ger, a stranger—is seeking home, which the Talmud describes as coming “under the wings of the Divine Presence.” On so many levels, that’s not a simple thing. Home is complicated (what would therapists do without it?!). And yet, the experience of at-homeness is also uncomplicated: It’s the basic yet deep feeling of welcome, embrace, safety.

While loving our neighbors, and feeling that our neighbors love us, may be the highest expression of that, the essential, irreplaceable ingredient is being able to trust that our neighbors do not seek to do us harm. For too many people—Jews and people who aren’t Jews, in Israel, in America, and around the world—that has become hard to do.

I’ll close with a final observation. This week marked Israel’s 78th Independence Day. In preparation for our 250th Independence Day here in the United States this summer, I recently read Jeremy David Engels’s wonderful little new book, On Mindful Democracy: A Declaration of Interdependence to Mend a Fractured World (Parallax Press, 2026). “To declare interdependence,” Engels writes, “is to acknowledge and celebrate a basic and inescapable fact of human existence: each of us is interwoven with other people, other beings, and this beautiful blue orb we call home.”

In my view, the project of collective self-governance is ultimately about enabling each and all of us to feel genuinely at home—on the planet, in our lives, in our languages, cultures, and traditions. Engels writes, and I agree, that awareness of our interdependence is a natural outgrowth of mindfulness, “the practice of being aware of what is going on inside of and around us.” Mindfulness, whether expressed Jewishly or in any other idiom, helps us nurture the habits of the heart that are fundamental to democratic life—and to allowing each and every one of us to be truly, genuinely at home.

For Reflection & Conversation

  • When, if ever, have you felt politically at home in a country? What contributed to that?

  • When, if ever, have you felt politically homeless? What contributed to that?

  • How easy or difficult do you find it to trust that your neighbors don’t seek to do you harm? How do you imagine they feel about you? What, if anything, might you do to promote greater trust between you?

Practicing Netzach: Despite It All, We Persist

Practicing Netzach: Despite It All, We Persist

Apr 22, 2026 | Blog, by Rabbi Marc Margolius, Senior Core Faculty and Senior Advisor, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

We are moving into the fourth week of the Omer, the seven-week period between Passover and Shavuot, traditionally a time for spiritual reflection and growth as we move from freedom towards revelation.¹

This fourth week of the Omer is associated with the kabbalistic sephirah (Divine emanation) of Netzach (“victory” or “endurance”). A middah (spiritual/ethical trait) associated with Netzach is zerizut, the energetic response necessary for fulfilling an intention. The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of modern Hasidism, taught that as beings “formed in the image of the blessed Holy One who generates worlds … everything we do should be with energy and dedication (b’zerizut), since in every act we are able to serve God.”²

In his ethical masterwork Mesilat Yesharim (“The Path of the Just”), Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzato describes two forms of zerizut: one prompting us to act, and one sustaining our action. In the first, we respond immediately as opportunities arise.³

For Luzzato, such zerizut means:

not allowing a mitzvah to become chametz (literally, “soured”). Rather, when the time of its performance comes, or when it happens to present itself, or when the thought of performing it enters one’s mind, one should hurry and hasten to seize hold of it and perform it, and not allow time to go by in between. … [E]ach new second that arises can bring with it a new impediment to the good deed.⁴

Once we’ve initiated action, we shift into the second aspect, “follow through zerizut” or persistence:

[Once] one [has taken] hold of a mitzvah, one should hasten to complete it. … [W]hen one is performing a mitzvah with great swiftness, this will move one’s inner being to kindle aflame also, and the desire and want will increasingly intensify within. But if one acts sluggishly in the movement of one’s limbs, so too the movement of one’s spirit will die down and extinguish. This is something experience can testify to.

Lethargy represents a “shadow aspect” of zerizut. Many of us have a habitual inclination to procrastinate when facing a task, particularly if we anticipate it being unpleasant or challenging. Our lassitude may reflect the yetzer hara operating within us, fulfilling its function of protecting us from frustration or disappointment. Our instinct to avoid may reflect underlying patterns of thought and emotion designed to shield us, such as fear of revealing our limitations. Or we may simply feel overwhelmed, driven by fear of inadequacy to the task. 

In mindfulness practice, we witness how our mind generates justifications to rationalize and support our tendencies to delay or avoid. Rather than judge our propensity for procrastination harshly (“I’m so lazy!” “I should do more!”), we apply chesed or compassion to our underlying anxieties, fear, and/or pain. We “befriend” the bases for our sluggishness. We remember that perfection is neither expected nor attainable, and that we are called to do only our small part in addressing even huge tasks. “The day is short and the work is much, the workers are lazy and the reward is great, and the Master of the house is pressing,” Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot 2:20-21. “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.” 

Softening the grip of our fear and undermining the associated justifications can free our Netzach energy to manifest zerizut by taking immediate steps responding to what had felt daunting. Once we have “engaged our engine,” we cultivate zerizut as persistence in the face of obstacles and the inclination to slow down.  

In these deeply challenging days, many of us may experience a sense of despair and paralysis in the face of so many pressing issues. It is easy to fall prey to a false belief that we cannot make a difference. Some of us are crippled by perfectionism. As we notice inner messages feeding our sense of inadequacy, we meet these with compassion, soothing our fears enough to open our mouths to say what needs to be said, move our feet and go where we are needed, and take small steps towards justice. Moving skillfully through our internal and external hindrances, we practice zerizut by meeting obstacles with compassion and determination. Nevertheless, despite all the internal and external challenges, we persist.

¹ Week Four runs from sundown Thursday, April 23, until sundown on Thursday, April 30.

² Tzava’at HaRIVa”Sh #20 (“The ‘Testament’ of the Baal Shem Tov),” trans. Rabbi Jonathan Slater.

³ In keeping with a rabbinic adage “zerizin makdimin lemitzvah, those who engage in zerizut perform any mitzvah at its earliest possible moment.” Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 4a.

⁴ Rabbi Moshe Hayyim ‎Luzzatto (1707–1746), Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Just), Amsterdam, chap. 7 (trans. Sefaria).

Noticing the Transitional Nature of All Things

Noticing the Transitional Nature of All Things

Apr 22, 2026 | Blog, by Yael Shy, Sefira Wellness

Practice originially written as part of the Shevet Reset, a Jewish meditation challenge for younger adults.

When I first learned to meditate on retreat, the instructions sounded simple: sit still, follow the breath, and when discomfort arises, notice it before reacting. Easy, right?

It was not. My body immediately rebelled—aching knees, itchy skin, endless shifting. I felt terrible at meditating. But eventually, with nothing else to do but practice, something shifted. One day I noticed a strong itch on my nose and, for the first time, I paused. I felt the urge to scratch. I stayed with the sensation. And then—without me doing anything—the itch passed. On its own.

That itch changed everything. After all, so much of my life was made up of itches I scratched without thinking, feeling powerless not to. Each time I felt lonely, I texted an emotionally unavailable ex. Each time I was angry, my fingers flew to a keyboard, typing faster than I could think, hitting send before I could change my mind. Each time I felt anxious, I would binge eat or drink tequila or shop for clothes I didn’t need, anything to put out the fire of discomfort or pain. If I could slow down enough to watch the life cycle of an itch, as well as the desire to scratch it, without reacting, then suddenly, my habitual ways of dealing with desire were fair game for pause and interruption. As Victor Frankl famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

This is your invitation for practice. See, as best as you can, if you can slow down and notice the transitional nature of all things – your breath, the light, an itch. Pay attention to how everything is shifting and changing all the time. See if you can elongate the time between stimulus and response by paying attention to these moments of constant change and transition.

Reflection Questions:

  • What transitions are happening in my life, right now?
  • What arises for me in moments of transition? What emotions (fear? Excitement? Relief?) What thoughts? (“I better hold on”? “I like this”? “I hate this”?) What bodily feelings? (clenching? constricting? relaxing?)
  • What supports me during periods of transition?
Carpe Diem—or Not (Tazria-Metzora 5786)

Carpe Diem—or Not (Tazria-Metzora 5786)

Apr 17, 2026 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

One of the most enduring Torah lessons I ever learned came from a 19-year-old college student named Joey. He was interviewing for a campus “engagement” (i.e. outreach) internship when I was the Hillel rabbi at Northwestern. As part of the interview, we asked the applicants to read Hillel’s famous three questions (in English) and comment on them: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? When I am for myself, what am I? And, if not now, when?”

It was Joey’s response to the third question that stuck with me the most. I had always read that question as a Jewish version of carpe diem—seize the day, which my generation learned from Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. But Joey looked at the text, paused, and said: “Yeah, if now’s not the right time, you really gotta know when the right time is.”

It was a total 180, completely changing my understanding: Life isn’t always about seizing the moment; it’s also about recognizing what the moment is, and what it needs from us. To this day it remains one of the most beautiful moments of Torah learning I can remember.

Ever since, I have found that I often have two voices in my head. One says, “Do it now, why wait?” But another reminds me of Joey, saying, “Now may not be the right moment. Pause and consider.” A paradox, not unlike the two slips of paper that Reb Simcha Bunim taught us to carry in our pockets: one that says, “the world was created for me,” and the other that reads, “I am but dust and ashes.”

We can find a parallel dialectic in two comments on Parashat Tazria-Metzora.

While on its face this double-portion deals with the ritual laws surrounding skin diseases and impurities in the walls of the home, the Midrashic tradition has long read them as instructing us about the ethics of speech. Rabbi Jacob Kranz, the Maggid of Dubnow (1741–1804), illustrates this approach in a comment on Leviticus 14:2, the opening verse of Metzora:

“‘And the afflicted person shall be brought to the Priest.’ People treat lashon hara (evil speech) lightly because they do not know the severity of the matter or the crushing power of the mouth. They do not know how to evaluate the negative influence of evil speech. People think: ‘What have I done? I only uttered a sound from my mouth; these are just mere words.’ Therefore, ‘that person shall be brought to the Priest’ so they may see that the speech of the Priest decides their fate, for better or for worse. By the Priest’s utterance of ‘Pure,’ the person becomes pure; by saying ‘Impure,’ they become impure. From this, the person will learn to value the immense power within speech for both good and evil—’Life and death are in the power of the tongue.'”

In the Maggid’s reading, the point of the procedures outlined in the Torah is to teach us humility. Why do we engage in lashon hara, mindless speech, in the first place? Because we aren’t sufficiently humble, and thus we don’t recognize the damage our words can do. By submitting to the word of the Priest, who will pronounce the person pure or impure, the Torah teaches us to remember the power of speech and treat it with the proper care and respect.

Yet we find a different, seemingly contradictory, understanding from Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen Dvinsk (1843-1926) in his commentary Meshekh Chokhma. For him, the lesson here is not only about teaching humility but also reminding us that each situation has its own context, and that one rule should not necessarily apply in all situations. Here is what he says:

“‘And the Priest shall see the affliction… and the Priest shall see the afflicted person…’ Why the repetition? One can say that this speaks of two types of perception: ‘The Priest shall see the affliction’: This is according to its plain meaning—that he should look at the affliction to see if it contains signs of impurity, such as white hair and so on. ‘And he shall see the afflicted person’: There is another type of ‘seeing,’ or perception, regarding whether it is appropriate to declare the person impure, which is not connected to the affliction itself but rather to the person and the timing. For example: A newlywed is given all seven days of the wedding feast [before being inspected]. Similarly, on a Festival, a person is given all the days of the festival so as not to disturb their joy. The ways of the Torah are ‘ways of pleasantness’ (Proverbs 3:17), and this second ‘seeing’ refers to the Priest truly perceiving the person—their quality and situation—to determine if the timing and circumstances make it appropriate to declare them impure.”

While these are two divergent readings, they share an emphasis on mindful awareness of our speech. The Maggid of Dubnow invites us to be aware of the power of even the smallest speech acts, words we think are meaningless, and recognize the power they hold. If nothing else, the words we tell ourselves have the power to shape our experience of the world—and that’s before we get to how they can affect others. In many ways the Meshekh Chokhma is saying something similar: the Priest has enormous power in his hands. With his words he will create a ritual and social reality for the afflicted person. Thus, he is exhorted to be mindful before speaking, and to truly perceive the situation of the person before him.

Which brings us back to Hillel’s “If not now, when?” A core mindfulness teaching, of course, is that we can only know the present moment. That could lead us to a kind of carpe diem (or, in more contemporary parlance, YOLO) orientation. Yet mindfulness also counsels us to be fully present in the moment we’re living in. That requires taking the time to really perceive and understand the context in which the present moment is occurring. On the deepest levels, the discipline of spiritual practice is about living both of these truths simultaneously.

For Reflection & Conversation

  • If you had to put yourself on a spectrum between “seize the day” (1) and “wait for the right moment,” (5) where would you put yourself? When, if ever, have you wished you were more one or the other?
  • As you think about your life right now in the world that we live in, how might you want to strengthen either or both ends of this spectrum for yourself?
Home (In)Security (Shemini 5786)

Home (In)Security (Shemini 5786)

Apr 10, 2026 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

In a normal week, I typically send these reflections to Andrew, our wonderful senior operations associate here at IJS, on Wednesdays. Andrew formats them and gets them all set to arrive in your inbox Friday morning (hence the name, “Josh’s Friday Reflections”). Natalie, one of our other wonderful team members, puts them on our blog. And then our communications & marketing team puts them out on social media.

In a normal week, that works pretty well. Sometimes, when things in the world are a little more uncertain, I’ll wait until Thursday morning to send my piece to Andrew.

This is a particularly abnormal week. As I write, it’s Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday for me are yom tov, the last days of Passover, when writing (even on a computer) is prohibited. And on top of that, on this particular Tuesday, the President of the United States has threatened the death of “a whole civilization” unless the leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz.

While mindfulness practice reminds us that we never truly know what the world will look like in a few days, or even in the next moment, in some moments that truth is more acute than others. This is one such moment. I feel like I’m writing a message in a bottle. Yet I think it also reflects a deeper paradox, which is that we can never be fully secure—in our knowledge, in frankly just about anything—and yet must find a way to live with a profound sense of security. This, in so many words, is the conundrum of home.

Regular readers will know that, after years of thinking about it, I developed my bumper sticker definition of the word spirituality: It’s our capacity to feel truly, deeply at home in the world. That can be in nature. It can be with loved ones. It could be at particular moments, in particular places, performing particular rituals. It could be when we’re able to be simply and truly at home in this body, with this breath, right now.

Whatever the experience, I think a through-line is this profound sensation of being at home: Safe, held, embraced, grounded, connected, loved and able to love.

And yet, home can also be profoundly fraught. It is not necessarily always pleasant. Precisely because home should be a place we can trust, the moments when that trust is betrayed can be among the most harmful and painful in our lives.

Parashat Shemini marks the fulfillment of a homecoming. For weeks now we have read of our ancestors’ labor to build a home for the Divine Presence. Finally, the moment comes: “The Presence of YHVH appeared to all the people… And all the people saw, and shouted, and fell on their faces” (Leviticus 9:23-24). The Holy One and the Israelites are at home with one another.

And then disaster strikes, as Nadav and Avihu offer a “strange fire which was not commanded,” and are consumed by a Divine fire. All the promise and hope of that feeling of at-homeness is betrayed in an instant.

The tradition chose a fitting portion of the Prophets to pair with this portion as the haftarah this week: the story of King David bringing the holy ark to Jerusalem in II Samuel 6-7. While the two stories would seem most linked by the death of Uzzah, who is struck down by God for touching the ark, I would suggest that there are other deep connections. In particular, I think both stories are fundamentally about home.

We see this most explicitly in the second half of the haftarah, when David says to the prophet Nathan, “Here I am dwelling in a house of cedar, while the Ark of YHVH abides in a tent!” Yet the Holy One’s response is not straightforward: “From the day that I brought the people of Israel out of Egypt to this day I have not dwelt in a house, but have moved about in Tent and Tabernacle. As I moved about wherever the Israelites went, did I ever reproach any of the tribal leaders whom I appointed to care for My people Israel: Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?”

Commenting on this passage, Rabbi Meir Leibush Wisser (Malbim, 1809-1879) suggests that God’s words to David can be understood as a kind of rebuke. He reminds us of the Rabbis’ understanding that a final resting place for the Divine Presence could only be established when the people of Israel a) had a clear and fully legitimized government, and b) were finally, truly at rest from their journeys and persecutions. While David may have felt that his dynasty was now secure and that the people were finally at rest, the Holy One calls that into question (at least momentarily—the text goes on to promise that David’s son, Solomon, will indeed build the Temple).

I think it’s worth lingering on the Malbim’s interrogating impulse. I hear in his comment some deep questions about what it means to be truly at home: What does it feel like to be provisionally at home—in a tent, on the move, going from place to place, yet still somehow abiding? What does it feel like to be permanently at home? Can we ever really know that our security is finalized and guaranteed? If so, what might be the effects on our spiritual practice, our ethics—and are those effects all desirable ones? If not, what does it mean to live a life in which we never feel truly, deeply at home?

These are some of the most ancient of Jewish questions and we are, of course, asking them in our own way right now—in how we think about land of Israel, and how we inhabit our sense of citizenship in the countries in which we live. But also on more day-to-day levels, as we yearn to feel safe and secure in our homes and our bodies, while also knowing that, on some level, no safety is ever truly guaranteed. How we hold that holy fire, that space of existential insecurity, is our perpetual spiritual task.

For Reflection & Conversation

  • Where, when, or with whom do you feel truly, deeply at home? What do you think enables or supports that feeling?

  • Have you ever had to assemble or reconstruct a new home or a new life—after a move, a life event, an accident? How, if at all, did your sense of home change?

Gametime (Shabbat Hagadol 5786)

Gametime (Shabbat Hagadol 5786)

Mar 27, 2026 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

My youngest child recently celebrated his bar mitzvah and thereby became an adult in the eyes of Jewish tradition. And, right on cue, he has also hit his developmental stride as a teenager: he is much more interested in hanging out with his friends than with his parents. (As a dear family friend once put it, the essence of parenting at this stage might be described as being around so your child can ignore you—which, in my experience, is both true and important.)

Yet, miracle of miracles, Toby still likes us to read to him before bed. And before the window on childhood closes completely (which I presume will likely happen when he comes home from camp this summer), this year we’ve been reading C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books together. We’re up to number six, The Silver Chair, which (spoiler alert) tells the story of two children on a mission to rescue a prince from his imprisonment by an enchanting witch deep in the underground.

The climactic moment of the book comes when the witch is about to successfully enchant the children and their guide, a “marsh-wiggle” (frog-like human creature) named Puddleglum. As the witch strums on her magic stringed instrument and hypnotizes the heroes, she gradually gaslights them into believing there is no world above: there is no sun, there are no trees, there is only this world below the surface.

Just when the light of their consciousness is about to be fully extinguished, however, Puddleglum accesses some inner psycho-spiritual strength, sticks his foot in the fire burning in the witch’s fireplace, and makes a rousing speech that turns the tide:

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s a small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.

C.S. Lewis was, of course, a believing Christian, and Puddleglum’s speech is a thinly veiled sermon about religious belief. Aslan, the lion of witch and wardrobe fame, is meant to be a Christ-like figure. So when Puddleglum says, “I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia,” he is clearly not just talking about Aslan or Narnia.

Yet just as important in this speech is a related word, the capacity upon which Puddleglum’s belief rests: play. “Four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play world.” Lewis isn’t only making a case for religious belief, he’s trying to rouse his readers to imagination. And in this, he’s espousing something deeply Jewish—and deeply woven into Passover.

One of the very first things we do during the Seder is initiate a game. During the yachatz step of the Seder, we break the middle matzah and hide away the larger half—the afikomen. This kicks off a game of hide and seek that concludes at the end of the Seder meal, with the tzafun step (tzafun means “hidden”).

Commenting on yachatz, Rabbi Marc-Alain Ouaknin observes: “The Haggadah allows us to discover an essential dimension of humanity. A human being is not defined, as Descartes thought, by his or her capacity to think (“I think, therefore I am”). A human being is not “homo cogitans” (a thinking being), but rather “humo ludens” (a playing being).” Ouaknin goes on to describe the dual relationship between order (“seder”), which is embodied in ritual, and play: “Ritual establishes and creates structure; play, by contrast, changes and destroys structure.”

Further on, commenting on the Maggid section of the Seder, Ouaknin describes the Haggadah as “playful,” particularly in the way it approaches text, language, and history. “At any time,” he observes, “one may compose an astonishing diversity of interpretations… of any single event.” This is an essential, even foundational aspect of freedom in Jewish life: the freedom to think, to imagine, to play. And in marking the Festival of Freedom, the Haggadah reflects this all over: In its multiple answers to the Four Questions, its meandering and tangential stories, and perhaps most obviously in the Mishnaic imperative lidrosh, to make midrash on the Torah text. “In this interpretive pluralism,” Ouaknin concludes, “no interpretation is rejected.”

No interpretation, that is, “except those resulting from violence or that produce violence.” In Ouaknin’s commentary, this line almost comes across as an afterthought. I mean, obviously, right?! And yet, reading it this year (and I read Ouaknin’s Haggadah every year), I find myself caught on the sentence. Because we live in violent times, and words—including words of Torah—are being used to underwrite violence: towards human beings, towards Jews, and by Jews towards other human beings, by Jews towards other Jews.

The Exodus, of course, is not a non-violent series of events. Moses’s own story is born in violence, and his adult life commences with his killing of an Egyptian taskmaster. When we gather together on Seder night, we are re-enacting an historical memory of our people trusting in divine protection from the Angel of Death unleashed upon Egypt. And we justify that violence by saying it was necessary for the cause of our liberation. Similarly, the Rabbinic tradition tells us explicitly that if someone seeks to kill us—i.e. do violence to us—then we are authorized to commit violence to defend ourselves. The Torah should not be misunderstood as a pacifist document, or our tradition as a pacifist tradition.

But that brings me back to Ouaknin’s line about violence and interpretations. In its local context, I understand Ouaknin to mean that there are limits to how far we can massage the text. Returning to the idea of play: A game requires rules, a theater production depends on the imaginary fourth wall. An interpretation must be plausible to be legitimate, i.e. within the play space, and is unacceptable if it is so forced as to be violent. Yet I also understand Ouaknin, who is a student of Levinas, to be evoking the history of twentieth century wars. Which suggests to me that the violence of which he speaks is not only rhetorical or aesthetic, but embodied and political.

The stakes here are high. On Seder night, Ouaknin observes, “everyone has the obligation to tell. What is at stake in this telling is the creation of a narrative identity in every participant, reader, or simple listener to the text.” In other words, on Pesach we encounter the opportunity—and the requirement—to narrate ourselves into and within the story of the Jewish people. It’s gametime.

Fundamentally, we aspire for our story and our play to be peaceful and non-violent: “Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace” (Proverbs 3:17). This is Torah in its ideal state, the Jewish life we sing of every time we return the Torah scroll to the ark. Perhaps that’s a reason that children, and their capacity for imagination, are so central on this holiday—because in our tradition children are, by definition, incapable of willful violence. What makes this night different from all others, perhaps, is that we are invited, and even required, to re-enter a state of nonviolent play—and thereby to re-member ourselves within our story and our people.

For Reflection & Conversation

  • What do you remember about playing as a child? When, if ever, have you experienced that kind of playfulness as an adult?

  • What does it mean to you to play with a text or an idea? Who or what sets the limits to that play?

P.S. I will be taking time off next week for Pesach and won’t be sending a Friday Reflection email on April 3. The next one will be sent on Friday, April 10.